deacon's corner

We live in a world at a time where miracle and majesty are dismissed as fantasy and mundane. Our senses have been numbed by the constant barrage of the unbelievable and the bizarre to the point where we no longer see or believe in miracles. Our sight has become so diminished by optic overload from digitally-enhanced movies and video games that we have become blind to the awesome beauty and majesty of God’s creation. Our minds have been corrupted, filled with dark and forbidding images from books, films, and games that focus on evil rather than the good.

In Making Choices: Practical Wisdom for Everyday Moral Decisions, author and philosopher Peter Kreeft begins by stating “… our civilization is dying because its fundamental foundation and building block, the family, is dying. Parents know today that it’s a moral jungle out there. They fear for their children’s safety, their survival, and their very souls. Body, soul, and spirit are all threatened; health, happiness, and holiness are very difficult to maintain.”

Meister Eckhart, a Dominican friar and mystic of the 13^th and 14^th centuries wrote “Nobody at any time is cut off from God. Whether you go away or return, God never leaves you. God is always present.” No matter how hard you try to push Him away, to shut Him out of your life, “it is impossible to lose God.” And that has to be a most frustrating experience for those who profess no belief in a Creator or for those who are annoyed by the thought of an ever-present, all-seeing, all-knowing God.

As a ‘cradle Catholic’ I have little understanding of the emotional and spiritual upheaval that must occur when converting to Catholicism. I must admit that I hold any and all who have come into the Catholic faith from another with a bucketful of awe, mixed with a large measure of gratitude. In awe, for their courage, strength, and willingness to open their hearts and minds to new and sometimes difficult beliefs while letting go of that which has offered them security and sustenance for so many years. I feel great gratitude for their uplifting presence, steadfast devotion, and fervent participation in their new, and our collective church community.

The Greek word ‘hamartia’, means ‘missing the mark’, and is often used in Sacred Scripture when referring to ‘sin’. We have been taught, from an early age, that we are all sinners; that we were born with the stain of original sin, and that baptism removed that stain from our souls and made us innocent in the eyes of God.

Recently I was asked whether there are different levels of heaven, or to put it another way, will there be different levels of existence in heaven. It is an intriguing question. It is also an important one.

Returning home is often filled with old memories, distant dreams, renewed kinship, raucous laughter and even a few tears. For twenty-eight years we have been coming together to remember and to celebrate the lives of the two who gave us life. Each year my ten brothers and sisters and their families – four generations now – come together for a few days, to once again rekindle the close bond of family and to keep their memory fresh within our hearts. If everyone attended we would number over eighty; this year we saw fifty-four, of those only eighteen were alive before our parent’s tragic passing.

For many years, our two daughters firmly asserted that the reason, the only reason they were brought into this world was to toil tirelessly as slaves to their parents’ every command. How else, they would argue, could we explain our insistence – they would use harsher words such as demand, order, command, or dictate – that they learn how to prepare meals, clean dishes, vacuum and dust, do laundry and ironing, and all the myriad of chores that must be done in any home. Make no mistake, we were truly terrible tyrants who gave no quarter and demanded absolute perfection.

Over the past several weeks the message from the pulpit has been focused on freedom, specifically as it pertains to the religious freedoms that we enjoy. Our bishops have asked that we observe a fortnight (14 days) in defense of our liberties and freedom and for all clergy to speak out, from the pulpit, on a number of issues that currently threaten our religious freedom.

You have undoubtedly been told or heard it said that you should see the face of Jesus in everyone you meet. So, how’s that working out for you? I suspect that most of us would have some difficulty in recognizing him even if he stood directly in front of us sporting a halo, wearing a name tag, and displaying his signature stigmata. We believe. We really do. But …